Outweigh

Memo to Al Jarreau: Keep on keeping on. You brought energy, imagination and irrepressible spontaneity to the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday -- qualities that have been too rare in this summer's uneven series of Bowl jazz concerts. Your versions of "Take Five" and "Spain" continue to be incredible displays of musical virtuosity. Scatting in 5/4, ripping through the disjunct melody of "Spain," doing it all with ease and improvisational invention, are the stuff of primo jazz singing.

Angel busybody Devon White had one of those rare nights when he didn't know whether to cherish or forget his contributions to a 4-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals at Anaheim Stadium Saturday. On the cherish side were White's three hits--two singles and a double--which helped push his average up to .299. He scored once. He flustered Royal starter Charlie Leibrandt into heaving a pickoff throw into foul territory. He stole a base, his 21st in a young season. All in all, a perfectly wonderful evening until you recount White's pair of mid-game adventures.

Bill Buckner has 2,553 major league hits. Only 61 players in baseball history have more. Billy Buck is a born hitter. He has 471 two-base hits. Only 40 players in history have more. Only one of them, Ted Simmons, is active. You can't strike him out. He could get wood on a mosquito. He fanned only 25 times in 681 at-bats last season. Some guys do that in a week. He has scored 1,034 runs, which put him on another all-time ladder, right on the spoor of the game's immortals.

Cypress Manager Greg Novy said he was happy with the way his team performed, despite losing two of three games. "I believe we had a team that was as good as any other team here," Novy said. "We were definitely capable of winning. Obviously, we didn't show as well as we could and we aren't pleased not to be playing [today] and Saturday, but we had a great run and we accomplished a lot. "I feel better than I thought I'd feel after losing. We're here in Williamsport, we had a record of 18-2.

When CIA Director George J. Tenet testified in mid-April before the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the keeper of America's secrets revealed a little secret of his own. "I sit back at night and look at a war in Iraq, a war on terrorism, conflict in Afghanistan and all the things I have to do, and recognize, you know, no single human being can do all these things," Tenet said.

October 11, 2010 | By Chris Woolston, Special to the Los Angeles Times

You may not realize it, but your life is radioactive. If you've eaten a banana lately, potassium-40 atoms in your body are shooting out thousands of particles every second. And if you're anywhere near solid ground, you can assume that radon gas is pelting you with gamma rays. With X-rays at the dental office, radon in the basement and cosmic rays beaming down from space, we're literally surrounded by radioactivity and high-powered radiation. Invisible, exotic and — as nuclear weapons have so clearly demonstrated — potentially lethal, radiation seems perfectly suited to inspire fear, says Jerrold Bushberg, clinical professor of radiology and radiation oncology at the UC Davis School of Medicine.

The school locker, long feared as a repository of drugs and weapons, is making a comeback. Some administrators are returning the metal boxes to campus, figuring it's better than creating a generation of students with back problems. In one Orange County school district, a board member who watched a student wobble and fall over from the weight of her backpack has proposed reinstalling lockers in middle schools.

"World Sneezes; U.S. Diners Get Sick" (Opinion, Nov. 30) grossly exaggerated the public health concern associated with consuming fresh fruits and vegetables based on an isolated, rare outbreak linked to only one small produce commodity. We understand the need to educate consumers about the current hepatitis outbreak, but Madeline Drexler's comments about the safety of fresh produce and of possible sources of contamination were irresponsible. Her piece actually poses greater danger to most people's health by deterring them from consuming at least five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, the No. 1 public health message of federal health authorities today.

Thank you for including "Navigating the Labyrinth of Life in Fez" [Dec. 14]. It is important for people to hear about the enormous rewards a journey like Terry Ward's provides. I spent the summer of 2002 in a six-week intensive Arabic language program at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Like Ward, I found the rewards far outweighed the perceived risk of traveling to the Arab world. Venturing beyond the bombardment of headlines depicting anti-Americanism in the Arab world allowed me to make my own assessment.

House Speaker Jim Wright argued today that his decades of public service outweigh any personal ethical shortcomings and suggested that political attacks against him are far more unethical than any failure of his own. "Because I hold passionately to certain political beliefs, I have made formidable political opponents in 40 years of active public life," Wright said in a Law Day speech on ethics to a hometown crowd in Ft. Worth. "But I have never sought to destroy another man's character, nor to deprive him of his dignity.